


What Means This Silence

by Crowgirl



Series: On the Strength of the Evidence [47]
Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Ficlet, Found Family, Gen, Holidays, Lightly Beta Read, Stress Baking, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 17:10:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13081434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: ‘I didn’t know you made candy, Mrs M.’





	What Means This Silence

Sidney leaves his half-finished sermon notes on his desk; he’s been nodding over them for fifteen minutes and a cup of tea may wake him up enough to get through the last page. He goes down the hall into a kitchen that’s thick with warmth and the smell of sweet things. There’s a rack of biscuits cooling on the table and Mrs Maguire is busy with some sort of production line by the stove that must involve something very hot to judge from the muttering and the twitchyness of her movements.

He lifts a biscuit while her back is turned -- it’s delicious, a chocolate kind she rarely makes because of the amount of butter -- and cranes to see what she’s doing. 

She has one of her large stewpots pulled as close to the edge of the range as she can get it without actually pulling it off the heat. Next to the range, on the counter, is a wide, flat bowl half-full of granulated sugar; next to that, there’s a faded dishtowel with what he realises after a minute are strips of candied peel spread out. 

‘I didn’t know you made candy, Mrs Maguire.’ 

Her shoulders stiffen very slightly and he knows she hadn’t heard him come in. ‘I am a woman of many talents, Mr Chambers.’

‘I never doubted it.’ Sidney goes around the other side of the table to get the kettle, fills it, and puts it back on the hob to boil. He watches Mrs Maguire flipping bits of peel between the syrup in the pot and the bowl of sugar with a fork. ‘There must be an easier way to do that.’

‘If you know of one, I’m all attention,’ she says, pursing her lips as a strip of peel goes awry and lands on the counter between range and bowl.

Sidney reaches under her elbow, nips it off the counter before she can grab it and bites into it despite her scowl. It’s delicious even without the final coating of sugar: sweet and warm with a very slight tang of the original citrus. ‘It matches your personality, Mrs M. You should make it more often.’

He means it as a tease, but she doesn’t take the opportunity to snap at him. Instead, she stands still for a moment, then drops her fork into the bowl of sugar and plants her hands on the counter. Her lips press into a thin line and, for a moment, he thinks he’s about to get the dressing-down of all time and braces himself. Then he realises she’s staring down at the bowl of sugar with the intent gaze of one trying not to give in to tears. ‘Mrs M, I--’

‘Mr Finch happened to mention that this is his favorite. And I thought...’ Uncharacteristically, she lets her sentence trail into silence and waves a hand, then clears her throat and presses the knuckle of her index finger against her upper lip.

Sidney hesitates for a moment, then reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s lovely of you. I know -- I know he’ll appreciate it.’ 

She nods, short and sharp, and he curses the fact that they can’t actually _have_ this conversation.

Leonard is miserable -- has been miserable all autumn -- because Ben’s time at Cambridge will be over at the end of next term and Leonard is already predicting disaster; Sidney is as sure as he is of anything that Ben has no intention of moving any farther from Leonard than he absolutely _must,_ but for some reason Leonard seems equally sure that this is the end of all things. Sidney had tried to laugh him out of it, teasing him about not having any more reason to go into college for his ‘reading afternoons’ but Leonard hadn’t taken the bait. If anything, he’d sunk deeper into a quiet gloom that’s only been getting worse as the autumn went by. The first snowfall had been a few days ago and seems to have acted as a catalyst to make Leonard look as though he’s being taken to the gallows.

The worst part is that Sidney is perfectly aware Leonard knows _he_ knows -- Mrs M feels much the same, he’s sure -- but none of them can so much as say a direct word about it. They can only talk in circles -- he’d give anything to be able to haul Leonard into his study, sit him down, and say, ‘Your lover is not going to leave you, you silly sod, stop brooding about it’ -- but he can’t. 

The kettle is boiling and Sidney clears his throat before turning off the gas. ‘Let me help you.’

‘What?’ Mrs Maguire looks up at him sharply and he squeezes her shoulder before letting go.

He nods towards the assembly line and begins rolling up his cuffs. ‘It looks like it would be much easier with two.’

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Henry VI](http://www.bartleby.com/70/3024.html).


End file.
